


^^<^ • 



&^\, Wm^j ^^^\. ^r 



-Kr^^^ 



r . ^ ^^ •'•^ 








6^ 6 » • • • ^i^ A^ 





,^^ 










'C^^^; 
















^' .. 



-.^■^ . 







"^^ 



3^ .0^'- 



, » ' ^'^ 



'^> ". 



^^' 'T>. aP s^JITO^JW* '^. 



.0' 






^.^'^ 






<^ 









> 



X:^* 

:^; 










:^ 







>. 



-'^ .^^ 



^^°.^ 



. ^"' 






%. 



« « vv 



'A ' 



•^. 



.-J 










5 ^p A- ^. 



.0- 



■^. 









'^'.v c- '« -^ ^"<^ rV 



^CaS 



■-^. ' 



f • • .V ' 






<> 'c,\* ,G^ 










-p^ 



.,v 



%^" 



*0- 



O^o^ 












o 



'\. -t.. .^ y.0^^: 



r vV^lvX> 



.V- V. 



''" "^J><^ 






.^' 



^' 









vO » 






■^- 4^^ .^^ 






^^ / 



V 






"<«» 







♦ ♦ ■» * 



r. ^^, A^ »*^^«?/V.' 






w 



% 



«b 



TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY 



OF 



CHARLES DEANE 



^? ti)e jnassat^usetts l^tetortcal ^oct'etp 



TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY 



OF 



CHARLES DEANE 



i3p t\)t i^tassacl^usetts; IE)i£itoncal ^ori'etp , /' 



AT A SPECIAL MEETING 



December 3, 1889 



BOSTON 

PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY 
1889 






SSnibersttg Press : 

John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



Gift 
American Hiatorioal Eovlew 

FEB 2 6 1925 






CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Remarks by 

George E. Ellis 5 

Robert C. Winthrop 10 

Charles F. Adams 13 

Stephen Salisbury 19 

Justin Winsor 20 

Samuel C. Cobb 22 

William Everett 22 

Samuel A. Green 23 

Edmund F. Slafter 24 

Edward Channing 25 

Edward J. Young 26 

R. C. Winthrop, Jr., commiinicatiug Letters from 

Henry Lee, W. C. Endicott, and H. M. Dexter 27 



Article by 

Charles C. Smith .... 29 



PROCEEDINGS. 



A Special Meeting of the Society was held on Tues- 
day evening, Dec. 3, 1889, at eight o'clock, at the house 
of Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, Jr., to express its sense of 
the loss it has sustained by the recent death of its 
senior Vice-President, Charles Deane, LL.D. 

After calling the meeting to order, the President, 
Dr. George E. Ellis, rose and said : — 

Gentlemen, — This special meeting of our Society is called 
and held as a tribute of our personal affection and esteem for, 
and an expression of our profound respect and grateful appre- 
ciation of, the character and the faithful and fruitful life-work 
of our late first Vice-President, Dr. Charles Deane. The 
meeting was prompted by our considerate host. The response 
to his invitation is spontaneous. Well do we know that the 
modest}'" and the unobtrusive spirit of our associate would 
have made him shrink from any greatly different method of 
our tribute to him, as his life closed, from that in which at 
our regular meetings he had so often taken a part, as, one by 
one, through lengthening years, our members have passed 
away. But by promptings coming with their own force, the 
feeling was warm and general among us that his death called 
for a special and signal expression of our exalted and grateful 
estimate of him and of his services to us. It needs not that 
we should be oblivious of the care and toil of the founders of 
this Society in their early devotion to it, in gathering, pre- 
serving, and setting forth the records and relics of former 
days, thus rescued from loss. Nor would we put any name 
in rivalry with that of James Savage, in industry, in research, 



6 

in intelligent interpretation and illustration, and in the pa- 
tience of work. But having been in membership here for 
just half of the nearly completed century of the existence of 
the Society, and through the greater part of those years in 
association with Dr. Deane, I must say now that he has 
given to us longer, more varied, more fruitful years of service 
in zeal, in care, in actual earnest devotion, and in the accom- 
plishment of difficult and exacting work, than any one whose 
name is upon our roll. And more than that, the manifold 
products of his work carry with them that unprofessional, 
natural, solid, substantial quality, the fruit of a thorough 
business training, which, better than polish of style, rhetorical 
skill, or discursive literary culture, give to historical papers 
dignity and value. He pursued his studies under the fairest 
and richest of all conditions, save those of his own mental 
furnishing, within the walls of his own library, with his own 
books, rare, precious, and complete in their range and con- 
tents for the subjects which engaged him ; and he had him- 
self gathered those curious and costly materials. The mere 
possession of such a library, if by hap one had come into the 
ownership of it, might well tem]3t and goad him to put it to 
good uses. But its contents were of his own selection and 
acquisition, volume by volume, even sometimes page by page. 
It was like a full font of antique and quaint type arranged in 
cases, which he was to dispose into a text of wisdom, with 
truthful oracles for setting forth severely digested and authen- 
tic history. In his searchings through old book-stalls in this 
country, and in his visit abroad, he had come to know what 
to look for, and where to find it. Through his agents, and in 
scanning the catalogues of dispersed libraries, he obtained the 
antique and curious treasures called Americana, — now but 
rarely to be picked up, and at fabulous prices ; and if editions 
of these differed in priority, fulness, or enrichment, his was 
the best. His own abounding and learned annotations in 
many of them are like the accumulated interest on old de- 
posits. Such tools, implements, resources, found in him a 
skilled workman, apt in using them. 

We know how lai'gely his work was with the more recon- 
dite, obscure, the tangled and perplexed elements and peri- 
ods of our history. His aim always was for severe and exact 



accuracy, the positive and certified facts of historical narration. 
He accepted such hues and incidents of romance as invested 
real persons and events, never decorating his pages with the 
inventions of fancy or fiction. The grim and sturdy naviga- 
tors of the heroic Elizabethan age, the sea-explorers and ad- 
venturers of pioneer enterprises, engaged his keenest study, 
though it was often as puzzling to verify their courses and 
landfalls as it would have been to follow their tracks on 
ocean ways. Those verbose, technical, and official parchments 
called Royal Charters, Patents, the forms and processes by 
which they issued and passed the Seals, and the grants and 
transfers under them, were often as vague and unverifiable as 
such would be to regions and privileges in the moon. He 
penetrated their secrets and methods, their appropriation of 
unbounded and unexplored territories bylines drawn in the air 
over them, as they conflicted, overlapped, and duplicated each 
other. This library of Mr. Deane was but the transfer of 
property from one kind into another, alike the product and 
material of his wisely directed and industrious life. 

Our own library, with its crowded shelves and cabinets, is 
identified with him as if he had been its guardian and its 
catalogue. How diligently, how intelligently, with what dis- 
cernment and skill, did he search into those fragmentary or 
voluminous papers ! Crabbed and must}^ though some of them 
are, he found use and value in them. He disposed them in 
order, with notes for helpful guidance. How valuable to us 
are our gains from his privileged leisure, spent j^ear after year 
in putting us into real knowledge and possession of our accu- 
mulated stores ! Many of us had come to look directly to 
him for the information formally and technically to be sought 
by card or catalogue. I hope that by some subtle quality 
passed into them those manuscripts, so many of them arranged 
and calendared by him in those bulk}^ tomes, will preserve 
for our successors the aroma of his virtue. 

The cherished memories of those who have been longest 
in our membership will most fondly and tenderly associate 
with our meetings those two congenial companions, friends, 
fellow-townsmen, co-workers. Dr. Deane and George Liver- 
more, that man of such rare and winning traits, so delicate, 
so earnest, so gentle, so devoted to our Society. The}' came 



8 

into membership the same year. Both had had their training 
in a life of business ; both devoted the means so acquired to 
the acquisition and best use of literary treasures. We owe 
to their friendship with each other and with another kindly 
benefactor the valuable and unique Dowse Library, with the 
fund for its care. 

I recall that at a meeting held in our hall in commemoration 
of Dr. Sparks there were arranged on the table something like 
one hundred substantial volumes, from his authorship or edi- 
torial care. Not in bulk, certainly, will the literary results of 
Dr. Deane's work equal that collection. Greatly different for 
the most part were the range and subjects for mind and pen, 
though of equal historical importance, which engaged those 
two faithful laborers. As already intimated. Dr. Deane's 
themes were many „ of them most obscure and perplexed in 
the materials for dealing with them. They were numerous, 
too, and varied in date, locality, and relations. He to whom 
shall fall the grateful office of Dr. Deane's biographer will find 
a keen and close diligence necessary to secure a complete list 
of his productions that are now in print. Some of the most 
brief and compact of them have in them a concentration of 
care, research, and value. I have incidentally used the name 
of our former President James Savage, the interpreter, expos- 
itor, and annotator of the earliest and most precious records 
of the Old Bay Colony, — Governor Winthrop's History, the 
founder and revered patron of the Massachusetts. Happily 
and most fittingly there came to Dr. Deane the opportunity 
and the ability to do an exactly parallel work for the annals 
of the Old Colony. He was the efficient agent in following 
up the identification of the long-lost History of the Colony 
by its Governor Bradford, which had mysteriously disap- 
peared. The manuscript of this priceless treasure proved to 
be hidden away in the library of the Bishop of London, at 
Fulham. Dr. Deane at once procured an accurate transcript 
of it, and then presented it, carefully, intelligently, and lumi- 
nously edited, to complete as it were in a noble volume the 
origines of our Commonwealth. T had the pleasure of giving 
a copy of that volume to Dean Stanley, on his visit to Ply- 
mouth. With absorbed interest he marked the pages with 
which historic localities and incidents were identified. On 



9 

his return liome he found in it a tlieme for discourse. So 
while the okl Puritan manuscript was slumbering' hard by 
him, its writer was the subject of a sermon on Forefathers' 
Day, in Westminster Abbey. 

Just as Dr. Deane's life was closing there came from the 
press the eighth and last volume of that laborious and elaborate 
work, which in its purpose and progress had intently engaged 
his interest and co-operation, — "The Narrative and Critical 
History of America," edited with such wide and exhaustive 
research and with such marvellous ability by our associate 
Dr. Winsor. Two of the most erudite chapters of that work 
were from the pen of Dr. Deane. His advice, judgment, and 
oversight were engaged through the whole of it. His own 
library, with its treasures for richest use, was one of the most 
helpful resources of the editor. During the nine years of its 
progress each volume as it appeared was discerningly wel- 
comed by him in conference with his friend ; but he was de- 
nied the sight of the last. A fine engraving of his form and 
features, in his genial serenity and dignity, is fitly presented 
in the first volume of the series, which appeared onl}^ after six 
preceding ones had been published. But I must not trespass 
by further detail upon the ofifice of his fuller memorialist. 

I have found it easy and attractive to draw this brief sketch 
of a part of the life-work, for ourselves and others, of our 
honored and beloved associate. Would that I might leave 
wholly to others the delicate office of delineating and defining 
the man, in personality, character, and spirit ! We say to each 
other what we cannot say to all, and we all of us feel what 
none of us will speak. If it be true, as has been said, that we 
are most gently and winningly impressed b}^ engaging traits 
in others more or less lacking in ourselves, then some of us 
may find a kindly monition in defining to ourselves, if we will, 
the charm and grace in the presence, the character, the mien, 
and speech of our vanished friend. Manliness, sinceiity, dig- 
nity, and an ever gentle courtesy showed what his spirit was. 
The deliberation of his thought and utterance attested the dis- 
cretion that was behind them. One might notice often that 
the mildest and most genial working of his features accom- 
panied the expression of his strongest dissent or disapproba- 
tion. He was incapable of offending any one with whom he 



10 

differed in view or opinion. When we had to take on trust 
matters of which we were ignorant, we would all admit that 
his assertions were the best substitute for our own knowledge. 
He had a candid consciousness of incompleteness in his attain- 
ments. He listened as courteously as he spoke. His judg- 
ment and dissent were always tempered. To those who 
have sat with him there, our hall will never wholly lack his 
presence. 

The following is offered for the action of the Society in 
recognition of our loss : — 

The Records of this Society for forty years are enriched in variety 
and value, by the papers contributed to them by our late associate and 
senior Vice-President, Dr. Charles Deane. It is with profound sad- 
ness that we must now enter upon those records that his life closed 
on the 13th of last month. Dr. Deane has long held a very high 
place in our fellowship for his historical acquisitions, for his skill and 
thoroughness in research, for his accuracy of statement, and for the 
weight of his opinions and judgment. He had examined many diffi- 
cult points, and was discreet and conscientious in his decisions. But 
more even than by his constant service for us, we were all drawn to 
him by the winning charm and graces of his character, his genial dig- 
nity and courtesy, the simplicity of his sincerity and kindness. We 
can all gratefully unite in this tribute of affection and respect for one 
whom we so much honored. While entering this tribute upon our 
records we would convey the expression of it with our tenderest sym- 
pathy to his bereaved family. 



The Hon. Robert C. Wintheop then said : — 

Few things, Mr. President, would have afforded me greater 
satisfaction than to pay an adequate tribute to so valued an 
associate and so esteemed a friend as Charles Deane. Had 
he been taken away from ns earlier, before age had impaired 
whatever of faculty for such an effort I may have possessed, 
or been credited with possessing, in former years, I could 
hardly have found a subject of the sort on which I should 
have been more willing to dwell. I knew him so long and 
so well ; I was for so many years an immediate witness of 
his devoted labors for this Society ; I owed so much to his 



11 

obliging co-operation and assistance in my thirty years of its 
Presidency, and I enjoyed so much of his personal regard and 
friendship during all this long period, — that anything I could 
have said of him or written of him would have come from 
the fulness of the heart, and been wholly a labor of love. As 
it is, I must be pardoned this evening for confining myself 
within a narrow compass. 

It may be remembered that at a recent meeting of this 
Society I found occasion for a brief allusion to those with 
whom I was associated when I first became a member, just 
half a century ago. Mr. Deane was not of that number. He 
was elected a member ten years later than myself; and it 
Avas five or six years later still before he began to make a dis- 
tinguished mark on our records. He was with me on the 
Standing Committee in 1853 and 1854; but the Society was 
not then in the way of doing much for itself, or of having 
much done for it. It was still restricted and crippled, as it 
had been from its original organization in 1791, by the want 
of adequate apartments, and of the means for procuring or 
improving them. Such rooms as we had were in a condition 
of confusion and chaos which would baffle and beggar all 
attempts at description. Our monthly meetings Avere very 
thinly attended, and communications of importance or interest 
were as rare as in later years they have been frequent and 
regular. 

But agreeably to the old proverb, it was darkest near day. 
A good time was then, at last, just opening for us. In 1855, 
at the same Annual Meeting at which I was called to succeed 
Mr. Savage as President, Mr. Deane became Chairman of our 
Standing Committee ; and from that time until his recent ill- 
ness and lamented death, he was recognized by us all as 
one whose services to this Society and to the cause of New 
England history could hardly be overestimated. 

It is a most striking coincidence that the proceedings of 
the same Annual Meeting, in 1855, at which he first came to 
the front, include the acceptance by the Society of the mu- 
nificent donation of ten thousand dollars from the late Samuel 
Appleton, as a Fund for the publication of our historical vol- 
umes, — and, as the very next item, the announcement that 
the most precious histoiical volume which we could ever hope 



12 

to be privileged to publish had been at last discovered and 
identified in the library of the Bishop of London, at Fulham, 
and was awaiting our orders ! 

That announcement was made by Mr. Deane himself, who 
had taken a leading part in the identification of the Bradford 
Manuscript, and whose subsequent annotation and publication 
of it, in our Collections, was perhaps the most memorable 
work of his life. It certainly established his position as the 
umpire on any and every question relating to the Pilgrim 
Fathers. 

A few months later the foundation of the Historical Trust 
Fund was laid by Mr. Sears ; and before another year had 
expired, the splendid library of Mr. Dowse, so long the envy 
of all who had ever seen it or heard of it, was presented to 
us by its venerable owner as the closing act of his remark- 
able life. 

I need not say that this sudden change in the condition and 
prospects of the Society involved as much of care and of 
labor as it did of gratification and gratitude. I almost ache 
anew as I recall the work which devolved on the officers and 
members associated with me at that time. Most happil}'-, 
however, there were found in our little number — then limited 
by law to sixty for the whole State — those who were willing 
and capable, and who entered on the work with enthusiasm, 
and carried it along to a successful completion. I may name 
especially Chandler Robbins, Richard Frothingham, Nathaniel 
B. Shurtleff, George Livermore, and Charles Deane. And of 
these five, I cannot hesitate to say, without any fear of being 
accounted invidious, that in view of the length, the variety, 
and the intrinsic value of his services, Charles Deane was the 
most important of them all. Had his dear friend, George 
Livermore, been spared to us longer, he might haply have 
contended for the pre-eminence. His intervention with Mr. 
Dowse, and his provisio'n as one of Mr. Dowse's executors for 
the arrangement and preservation of the library which Mr. 
Dowse had given us, can never be forgotten. But he him- 
self, were he living, would agree with me that the editing of 
the Bradford volume, the careful collation of the Belknap 
and Hutchinson papers, the preparation of the two volumes 
of our earliest history, and of so many of the volumes of our 



13 

later Proceedings, and the numerous excellent memoirs of 
deceased associates, of which he was the author, taken in 
connection with his long and faithful service as our Record- 
ing Secretary, have fairly entitled Mr. Deane to the foremost 
place among our working members during the forty years of 
his membership. 

I have said nothing of his services in other connections, — 
to the American Antiquarian Society, to the Boston Athe- 
nseum, and to other institutions. I have said nothing of the 
honors which he won abroad and at home, — his election as a 
fellow of the London Society of Antiquaries, and his degree as 
a Doctor of Laws and as a Master of Historical Study at the 
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Harvard College. I 
have said nothing of his characteristic qualities as an historian 
or as a man, — his untiring research, his unfailing accuracy, 
his rigid historical exactness, which " nothing extenuated nor 
set down aught in malice," his amiable and obliging disposi- 
tion, his private virtues, his Christian character; — I leave all 
these for those who may follow me. But I can hardly forego 
the opportunity of adding that a beautiful copy of an old illus- 
trated edition of the Bible, in which he had inscribed my name 
with his own not long before his death, and which has now 
been most kindly transferred from his library to my own, has 
furnished me with a touching reminder that my affectionate 
regard for him was reciprocated to the last. 

It only remains for me to second the tribute of Dr. Ellis. 

Mr. Charles F. Adams spoke as follows : — 

I must confess, Mr. Pi-esident, to a feeling of strangeness, 
and I might almost say of presumption, as I find m3^self in 
answer to your call following you and Mr. Winthrop in pay- 
ing such tribute as I may to the memory of Mr. Deane ; for 
I have always been accustomed to regard myself as still a 
young member of the Society, while you, Mr. Winthrop, and 
Mr. Deane had already, when I was first introduced into its 
rooms, been active in its work and prominent on its rolls for 
more than a quarter of a century. None the less I am re- 
minded of the passage of time, not only by the event we are 
here to commemorate, but by the fact that though my own 



14 

entrance into the Society seems so recent, yet more than half 
the names of those then upon the roll have since been ob- 
literated from it by death. The last published volume of our 
Proceedings shows that already I am far up towards the head 
of that procession which is ever silently moving whither Mr. 
Deane is now gone. 

But the mere mention of that first morning when I found 
ray way into the rooms of the Society brings back Mr. Deane 
to my mind. It was then, so far as I now can recollect, that 
I made his acquaintance. Possibly I had known him earlier, 
but if so I fail to recall the fact. I came to the rooms of the 
Society as a novice about to make my first attempt at histori- 
cal investigation ; for that deluge of centennial and quarter- 
millennial eloquence which has during the last fifteen years 
submerged the land, and which only now holds out the first 
promise of subsiding for a time, was then about to begin. For 
some reason, which I cannot now account for, I was invited by 
the town of Weymouth to deliver an address in commemora- 
tion of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the perma- 
nent settlement of the place ; for Wessagusset, as Weymouth 
was called in the early records, came in the order of age next 
to Pljmiouth among Massachusetts towns, and the quarter- 
millennial celebration of the Old Colony had occurred only 
four years before. I came to the Society's rooms to learn 
something of Wessagusset and of the early days of New 
England, — matters about which I was, as it now seems to me, 
singularly uninformed ; and, fortunately for me, on the thresh- 
old of my inquiries I met Mr. Deane. Meeting him, though 
of course I knew it not till later, made that one of the fortu- 
nate days of my life, for well do I remember the manner in 
which he extended to me his aid. Especially do I recall the 
gentle consideration with which, during the days which fol- 
lowed, he received my crude suggestions, and how kindly and 
imperceptibly to myself he guided me into the paths in which 
I should go. 

To the delivery of that Weymouth address I owed my elec- 
tion as a member of this Society. After that, whenever com- 
bined occasion and leisure led me to wander in the field of 
historical research, I was in constant intercourse with Mr. 
Deane. I have served with him also on committees of this 



15 

Society, especially upon the committee which, a few years ago, 
caused the index to the first twenty volumes of its Proceedings 
to be prepared. I think the suggestion that those Proceedings 
should be thus indexed was first made by me ; but Mr. Deane 
was associated with me as the committee having the matter in 
charge, and it is hardly necessary to add that all the really 
valuable work done was done by him. 

Of his familiarity with the records and proceedings of the 
Society, its publications, its traditions, and its unwritten usages 
and history, it is needless for me to speak. No one knew 
them as he knew them ; no one is likely to have an equal 
knowledge of them again. It was he who first annotated a 
publication of the Society, and I remember his once telling me 
that though in pursuing this course with Bradford's History 
he but followed the example of Mr. Savage in the notes to his 
Winthrop, yet Mr. Savage did not encourage his so doing. 
The old student of New England history was, he added, over- 
eager to know what Bradford had said, and the practice of 
annotating the publications of the Society was, moreover, in 
his eyes an innovation of questionable expediency. The only 
regret we now feel is that Mr. Deane in this matter allowed 
himself to be influenced even by the age and authorit}' of 
Savage. But for that there is reason to believe the pages 
of Bradford would have been enriched far more than they 
now are by the wealth of learning which their editor was no 
less ready than able to lavish upon them. 

And here, Mr. President, let me say that while I wholly 
concur in the praise you and Mr. Winthrop have given, and 
which others may give to Mr. Deane in this regard, I cannot 
but think that so far as Bradford's History was concerned he 
left his work unfinished. It was a matter on which I often 
talked with him. I was most solicitous that the great mass of 
detailed knowledge of our early history possessed by him should 
not be lost, and so I continually urged him to bring out as 
his magnum ojms a new edition — an edition de luxe — of Brad- 
ford, in two volumes, to be known for all time as " Deane's 
Bradford," into the notes of which he should garner up his 
stores. The idea seemed always to commend itself to him, 
and repeatedly he assured me that the thing should be done. 
At last, a year or more ago, I met him one day on Washington 



16 

Street, opposite the old State House ; and, as was our wont, 
we stopped and exchanged a few words. Again I referred 
to " Deane's Bradford," and asked him when the work was to 
begin. Then for the first time I noticed a changed expression 
in his face. He seemed to have aged since I had last met him, 
and his reply foreshadowed the end. He simply said, " Ah, 
yes ; I intended to do that, but it is now too late." And as I 
turned and walked on with a saddened feeling, I realized that 
" Deane's Bradford " was always to remain a want in New 
England historical work, — to my mind then and now an 
hiatus valde dejiendus. 

In earlier years — and my only regret is that the thing did 
not more frequently occur — it was my good fortune often to 
consult with Mr. Deane ; and I do not think it would have 
been possible to consult with one whose methods were more 
calculated to excite respect. He was a natural historical 
investigator. He had a calling that way. To me he seemed 
to have been over the whole field of early New England 
history, and his mind resembled some choice cabinet filled 
with many pigeon-holes, in each of which, properly labelled 
and docketed, was stored away some mental memorandum re- 
lating to subjects which, at one time or another, had been 
made by him matter of investigation. When one of these 
subjects came up, he as it were would open the cabinet of 
his mind, and produce from the proper pigeon-hole all that re- 
lated to that subject. He never seemed at a loss ; he never 
forgot ; he was never mistaken. Particularly do I remember 
two examples of this. In preparing, some years ago, a paper 
on Sir Christopher Gardiner, which I read before the Society, 
I vaguely recalled having somewhere seen a reference made to 
the loose moral conditions existing at an earl}^ period among 
the fishermen of Maine. I wanted the reference, but a search 
for i»t seemed almost hopeless. I did not know where first to 
look. I merely remembered having somewhere in the course 
of my researches seen such an allusion, which in a general 
way I was able to describe. In my perplexity I happened to 
meet Mr. Deane, and stated the case to him. Well do I re- 
member the smile which played over his face, and the bright, 
kindly look which lighted up his eyes as he heard of my per- 
plexity. And here let me add that no one who ever knew 



17 

Mr. Deane well is likely to forget that pleasant, friendly smile, 
and the bright kindly look of his eyes. They broke on you 
like sunshine ; and the best thing about them was that you 
felt they did but reflect the nature within. When I say that 
a half-hour passed with Mr. Deane seemed to warm up a whole 
day and leave a bright mark for memory on it, like a ray of 
sunlight on some vanishing point in the horizon, — when I say 
this, I fancy I am only expressing a feeling in my own case 
which will call forth a sympathetic response in the minds of 
many others. He had an expression of his own, which was 
luminous as well as genial. The mere memory of it will 
always make pleasant for me the rooms of the Society. 

But to return to the incident of which I was speaking, — 
as I mentioned my perplexity to him, Mr. Deane's face lighted 
up, and he instantly replied, " Ah, yes ; that is contained in 
such and such a report, made at such and such a time. Wait, 
I will bring it to you " ; and stepping to a neighboring book- 
case he took down a volume, and turned at once to the very 
passage I wanted. The other occasion was of a similar na- 
ture, and my inquiries related to some early New Hampshire 
worthy who bore the title of captain, but what his name was 
I cannot now recall. I had chanced upon this personage in 
the course of my investigations, and prepared a note in regard 
to him. Fortunately for me, I submitted my work to Mr. 
Deane. He glanced over it, and said at once, " Yes ; I see you 

are trying to support the theories of Mr. ." I then 

learned for the first time that there had been controversy over 
the person in question, and Mr. Deane knew all about it; in- 
deed, had himself, I think, taken part in the controversy. I 
assured him I wished only to obtain the facts, and if he would 
tell me what the facts were I should be only too pleased to in- 
corporate them, so far as in me lay, into history. He accord- 
ingly reshaped what I had written, and I have no doubt that 
in accepting the form in which he left it I hit as nearly as 
might be upon the truth. ' 

If my understanding of Mr. Deane's life is correct, he aban- 
doned business at a comparatively early age, and then, enjoy- 
ing an ample competency which enabled him to devote himself 
to chosen pursuits, he passed the remainder of life in those 
researches for which Nature had peculiarly adapted him. To 



18 

my mind this constitutes what may fairly be described as an 
ideally successful career. There are some lines, written, I 
think, by the Oriental scholar, Sir William Jones, which I 
have not seen for very many years, and accordingly I shall 
doubtless quote them wrong, — many of those here are prob- 
ably familiar with them and could correct me, — but they run 
in my memory thus : — 

" On nurse's knee, a naked, new-born child, 

Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled. 
So live that, sinking in the last long sleep, 

Thou mayest smile, while all around thee weep." 

To me these lines, fi'om birth to death, have always seemed 
to have concentrated in them the essence of a successful life ; 
the idea of consciously approaching the end, and then, as one 
naturally would, looking back in review of the whole only to 
pass smiling away, realizing that as life had been given for en- 
joyment, you had also enjoyed it to the full, deriving your 
keenest enjoyment from the happy and useful exercise of the 
best powers with which Nature had endowed you. This was 
given to Mr, Deane. Retiring from business pursuits and the 
necessity which compels so many, whether they desire to do 
so or not, to waste their lives in earning a living, — retiring 
from this business of earning a living while the sun still stood 
for him in mid-day sky, there came the long, contented, happy, 
busy afternoon, as that sun gradually drew to the horizon ; 
and as it sank little by little, it seemed ever to shine upon him, 
as he sat within the walls of his library, with a mellower and 
a more golden light. There, within those walls, surrounded 
by the books he loved, which may truly be said in his case to 
have been not only for himself but for his friends, it was given 
him to grow old through years of usefulness and contentment. 
He had his cares and sorrows ; that goes without saying. 
From them no man is exempt. None the less he had more, 
far more, of all that is best worth living for than is often 
given to those who seek the rewards and enjoyments of exist- 
ence in noisier, more dusty, and more frequented paths. He 
was a world, and a happy world, within himself. 

Therefore, meeting here as we now have met, with a sense 
upon us of the absence of one whom all respected, and all who 



19 

knew admired and even loved, I think we cannot feel that we 
would have it other than it is. In the case of Mr. Deane we 
have seen the peaceful ending of a blameless, useful, and 
happy life, after years of prosperous tranquillity passed in the 
uninterrupted enjoyment and exercise of the choicest faculties 
with which Nature had endowed him. All this is so ; but none 
the less his death has left in this Society a void which cannot 
be filled. 

Mr. Stephen Salisbury was called on, as a repre- 
sentative of the American Antiquarian Society, of which 
Mr. Deane was also a valued officer. 

Mr. President, — The American Antiquarian Society, feel- 
ing that it had suffered a peculiarly severe loss in the death 
of Dr. Deane, who had been a member thirty-nine years, 
a member of the Committee of Publication thirty-four years, a 
member of the Council twenty-five years, and Secretary of 
Domestic Correspondence for ten years, held a special meet- 
ing of the Council on the 27th ultimo to take action com- 
memorative of their beloved associate. The President alluded 
to the many services of Dr. Deane to the Society, which 
comprised three formal reports of the Council and seven- 
teen miscellaneous addresses and monographs, all of which 
were prepared with the care and completeness which char- 
acterized all Dr. Deane's literary work ; and he further 
offered resolutions which set forth the many ways in which 
Dr. Deane had aided this Society, and expressed the grati- 
tude with which his memory is cherished by his associates 
of the Council, stating the opinion that to the constant vigi- 
lance and efforts of Dr. Deane, much of the interest shown by 
the Society in purely historic research is justly due, while to 
him they are particularly indebted for a conspicuous example 
of a conscientious and unprejudiced historical method. 

Senator Hoar seconded the resolutions, and spoke eloquently 
and with great feeling of the very high and almost unique 
position occupied by Dr. Deane among literary critics, in his 
remarkable equipoise of judgment and industry of investiga- 
tion, which,' owing to his breadth of vision and fairness of dis- 
position, enabled him to do full justice to those from whom he 



20 

differed in opinion. Mr. Nathaniel Paine and Mr, Charles A. 
Chase, of the Committee of Publication, referred to their great 
admiration of Dr. Deane as an editor and critic of the English 
language, as well as of their respect and love for him as a man. 
Mr. J. Evarts Green then paid a tribute to Dr. Deane's in- 
tellectual worth as estimated by a managing editor of the 
Press. 

From the date of Dr. Deane's connection with the American 
Antiquarian Society, may be noted the commencement of the 
practice of offering unsolicited historical papers at stated meet- 
ings, other than the formal reports which were expected. Dr. 
Deane was nearly always present at meetings of the Society, 
and frequently had prepared in advance something of interest ; 
and those papers now enrich our publications, and many of 
them were afterwards privately printed. The officers of the 
Society have frequently consulted Dr. Deane as a mentor in 
cases of difficult administration, and have found that his judg- 
ment was uniformly wise, and was dictated " with malice to- 
ward none, but with charity to all." His genial presence was 
a benediction, and few could withstand the power of his open 
face and patient, intelligent couitesy. The character of gen- 
tleman was so natural to Dr. Deane as never to be oppressive, 
which is often the case when that quality is the result of effort 
or training. The American Antiquarian Society feel that 
their sorrow is second only to that of the older society, which 
has enjoyed the constant and daily co-operation and supervi- 
sion of an officer at once so faithful and so considerate. 

Mr. Justin Winsor then said : — 

It is at least forty years, Mr. President, since I first knew 
our lost friend. I was then a callow youth, more aspiring than 
wise, stirred with an impulse to do something — I scarcely 
knew what — in historical investigation, having derived that 
impulse, as I well remember, at the knee of an aged and near 
relative, who was accustomed to talk to me of the olden times. 
It was in the days before even Dr. Deane was a member of 
this Society, and we both came to its old rooms to pursue 
such search as was permitted in the manuscripts of its Cabi- 
net. Here it was I first encountered my friend. I was much 



21 

his junior, and I needed the beneficent serenity of his smile, 
the kindly advice, the sustaining help, which I readily got 
from him on the strength of a merely casual acquaintance. I 
never was quite absent from his influence ever after ; but 
for many years next succeeding, when my studies lay in quite 
other spheres than those of American history, I never met 
him but to feel the better for the contact. 

Thirty years passed before I was called to Cambridge and 
became his fellow-townsman. Acquaintance deepened into 
friendship, and such ties soon took on the strength of affec- 
tion. It so happened that it was given to me at this time to 
undertake the control of some large historical works. I had 
the less hesitancy, because I felt that such a mentor was near 
me. When a little later he offered to me a building-site on a 
corner of his estate, and I built myself a house there, our in- 
tercourse became almost that of members of one family. Dur- 
ing the progress of the works to which I have referred, he 
was constantly my adviser, and in some sections of them his 
judgment was compelling. I could not, and would not, dis- 
pute it. I saw him almost daily. Often of an evening I have 
gone across the grass to his house, to lay before him some his- 
torical problem which had arrested me. I found in him a 
relief. He could show me authorities I had overlooked, and 
place for me in their true relations others of which I could 
tell him. If I left him with the question unsolved, I was 
pretty sure to find the next morning, when I came down to 
my desk, a note upon it awaiting me, telling me of investi- 
gations that had kept him from bed perhaps, and they were 
alwa3^s pertinent and definitive. 

I never knew any one more conscientious in investigation. 
His mental movements were far from rapid, but they were 
sure. He never left any stone unturned in whatever might 
be the field of his inquiry. " The mills of God grind slowly, 
but they grind exceeding small." Here was a man, true to 
his heirship as one of God's creatures, grinding slowly ; 
but there was not so much as an atom which remained 
uncrushed. 



22 • 

The Hon. Samuel C. Cobb said : — 

Mr. President, — If I consulted my own inclination at this 
time, I should remain silent. It would be more in consonance 
with the spirit which now possesses me, that I should listen to 
others, who have come here to pay their tributes of respect 
and esteem to the memory of the late first Vice-President of 
this Society, rather than to raise my voice in this presence. 
But I yield to a request which I have received, to say a word 
in regard to our late friend and associate as a man of busi- 
ness. My personal acquaintance with Mr. Deane covered a 
period of nearly twenty years, beginning soon after his retire- 
ment from active mercantile life. As directors of one of the 
older insurance companies of this city, we met frequently. In 
the discharge of the duties of that office, as in the execution of 
all other trusts, he was constant, assiduous, and painstaking. 
He combined great practical wisdom with a keen discrimina- 
tion in solving the manifold problems of the financial and 
commercial world. 

If at times he seemed a little slow to apprehend a business 
proposition, once he understood it, he was certain to reach a 
correct solution of it. A man of the highest sense of honor, 
of a matured and conscientious judgment, of unswerving in- 
tegrity, and of unsullied character, his influence for good was 
felt wherever his business relations brought him in contact 
with others. It was in the field of historical research, how- 
ever, rather than in the business world, that our friend found 
his greatest satisfaction and achieved his greatest success. 

Mr. Deane will be remembered as an honorable, exem- 
plary, and useful Christian gentleman. He was a good citizen 
and a true friend. We may not venture to intrude upon the 
sacred precincts of the home which was illumined by the 
transcendent beauty and loveliness of his character. 

Who of us will ever forget his benign countenance, his win- 
some smile, or his cordial manner? A good man has gone 
from among us, — a man who performed his part in all the 
varied relations of life with honor, ability, and discretion. 

Dr. William Everett said that the charm of Mr. Deane's 
familiar intercourse, alluded to by the other speakers, was 



especially conspicuous in his treatment of young men who 
showed an interest in his own favorite studies. Young men 
who enter on such fields as historical study are often received 
by their elders in those pursuits in a manner neither generous 
nor wise. Mr. Deane's reception of young historians and book- 
lovers was absolutely free from exclusiveness, patronage, or 
petting. He treated them exactly as he would his own con- 
temporaries, opening to them the treasures of his library and 
his mind with a total forgetfulness of Ihe fifteen or twenty or 
twenty-five years which separated him from them. This genial 
and brotherly treatment, while it was the best encouragement 
to the young man to pursue his studies, only increased his pro- 
found respect for his elder, which would have been shaken by 
any dwelling on the difference of years. 

Dr. Samuel A. Green" said : — 

I am tempted, Mr. President, to relate a circumstance con- 
nected with Mr. Deane at the very last meeting which he ever 
attended. As is known to every gentleman here, this was the 
Annual Meeting on April 11, which had been called at twelve 
o'clock, instead of three o'clock, so that the members might en- 
joy the hospitality of the President during the afternoon. On 
that occasion there was a certain paleness about Mr. Deane's 
lips and cheeks, quite noticeable ; and more than once at that 
meeting my attention was called to this appearance. Im- 
mediately after the adjournment, I went to him and asked how 
he felt, when he said, " Not well at all," accompanying the 
remark with a characteristic gesture of the hand, which you all 
remember, over the region of the heart. I told him at once 
that he must go straight home, and give up the President's 
reception ; and that I was talking not only as a friend, but as 
a physician. He replied that Dr. Ellis would not understand 
the reasons of his absence, and that, if he was well enough to 
be at the meeting, he ought to be well enough to go to his 
house. To this I offered to make the necessary explanation 
to Dr. Ellis, who certainly would agree with me in the advice 
I volunteered ; when he replied that he would himself ex- 
plain matters, and requested me to say nothing about it. The 
conversation occupied less time than it takes now to relate 



24 

it ; and the result was that he stayed away from the recep- 
tion and went at once to Cambridge. On reaching Harvard 
Square, he took a carriage for his own house in Sparks Street, 
and never afterward left it again during his life. 

Rev. Edmund F. Slafter then said : — 

Mr. President, — I rise not with the hope of adding any- 
thing important to what has already been said. But Dr. 
Deane's spirit and method were so admirably illustrated in an 
incident that came under my own observation some fifteen or 
more years ago, that I cannot refrain from a brief allusion to it. 

I had been occupied some time in examining the organiza- 
tions in England for establishing colonies in America before 
any actual settlements had been made, when I came to a very 
complicated puzzle, which I was wholly unable to fathom. 
At length, having exhausted all expedients, I wrote a note of 
inquiry to Mr. Deane. I received a prompt reply, in which he 
said, " Referring to m}' notes, I find I had written as follows." 
He then quoted from his own manuscript what furnished a 
solution of my diflBculty, at once satisfactory and complete. 

I was greatly impressed then, as I have been many times 
since, with the unselfish readiness and generous freedom with 
which he placed the results of his own researches at the dis- 
posal of others to whom he was not under the remotest 
obligation. 

I saw, too, that his method of study was to illuminate the 
dark passages of history whenever he found them and as he 
went along, incorporating his conclusions into rich and perti- 
nent annotations to be used whenever they were needed at 
any future time. 

But there was another side to Dr. Deane's character, of 
which I know a little ; others doubtless know much more. 

A few years ago a friend whom I knew well, was brought 
into association with him in the appropriation and dispersion 
of charities. His spontaneous generosity, his warm and ready 
sympathy, and his almost womanly tenderness left on the 
mind of my friend an indelible impression of the exalted ex- 
cellence and goodness of his heart. 

Dr. Deane, like truly great and noble souls, was in accord 



25 

with the refined, the cultivated, and the learned ; while his 
sympathies reached down to the poor, the depressed, and the 
suffering. With the one and the other he has left a fragrant 
memory that will be long cherished as a precious inheritance. 

" Far may we search before we find 
A heart so manly or so kind." 



Professor Changing spoke substantially as follows : — 

As one of the j^oungest members of this Society, I wish to 
give my testimony as to the influence exerted by our late asso- 
ciate on the young men of the present day. It has been well 
said Dr. Deane put forth no extended historical work, unless, 
indeed, his edition of Bradford's "Plymouth Plantation" might 
be so consider&d. But he did produce much work of great 
value. And I venture to assert that his scholarly, conscien- 
tious, and historically truthful papers have done much to place 
the study of American histor}- on a sound and healthy basis in 
this country. I well remember when fresh from college I 
made what seemed to me an important historical discovery. 
Full of the importance of this discovery, I went to Dr. Deane 
and laid the matter before him. He listened patiently and 
long to my exposition of the facts as they appeared to me. 
He then asked me if I had consulted a certain book. I an- 
swered in the affirmative. And then he proceeded to pull 
down from his shelves book after book in refutation of the 
statement contained in the first authority. It did not occur to 
me till an hour or two later that my genial friend had in this 
pleasant fashion exploded my carefully elaljorated theory. 

Nor did Dr. Deane's sympathies with the young and inex- 
perienced become chilled as he advanced in honors and years. 
For the past few years it has been my fortune to teach our 
colonial history in the college at Cambridge, and I can affirm 
from my personal observation that he has stimulated by his 
writings and words more than a score of young men to do 
good honest historical work within the last eight years. And 
how can any master of history use the gifts with which he has 
been endowed better than by stimulating others to work as he 
himself has worked ? 



26 

The Eecording Secretary, Rev. Edward J. Young, 
D.D., said : — 

I have brought with me the hist letter which I received 
from Dr. Deane, and which is probably one of the last he ever 
wrote. The handwriting shows great weakness, but the tone 
of it is characteristic of the man. It relates to a little book 
upon which he had made some remarks that are printed in 
the last volume of Proceedings. 

Cambridge, Friday, 10th May, 1889. 
Dear Dr. Young, — Very sorry not to have seen you when you 
called. I have been trying to write you for two weeks, but had not 
strength. I wanted to say that that little Morrell tract had better be 
omitted. I have not strength to edit it. Near the foot of the page on 
which I speak of the tract in a former Serial, I say it will appear at the 
end of the volume. Those words had better be cancelled by Wilson in 
the plate, and all will be right, and what I say about the tract all con- 
sistent. Sorry to trouble you. When you get old and rheumatic I will 
do as much for you, if I am able. Glad Mr. Winthrop got back safely 
from New York. Take care of that precious man. I have just been 
reading the excellent speeches of Dr. Ellis and Mr. Winthrop in the 
" Post," as made at the Society yesterday. Sorry I could not be 
present. 

Faithfully yours, Charles Deane. 

I may be permitted to add a word in reference to the warm 
personal relations which existed between my father and Dr. 
Deane. Not long after the " Chronicles of the Pilgrims " was 
published, there appeared in one of the newspapers a notice of 
the book, signed " C. D." The article showed such intelli- 
gence and familiarity with the subject, that my father was 
eager to know who was the author of it. On inquiry he found 
that it was written by a young man who was then a commis- 
sion merchant in Boston. He immediately sought him out, 
and that was the beginning of a friendship which was inti- 
mate and life-long ; and my father nominated Mr. Deane as 
a Eesident Member of our Historical Society. 



27 
Mr. R. C. WiNTHROP, Jr., then said : — 

A number of members who much desired to be present this 
evening have been prevented from doing so, either by en- 
gagements of long standing, or by the dehcacy of their health, 
or by the inclemency of the weather, which has caused several 
of them to send excuses at the last moment. Two of them, 
Mr. Parkman and Mr. Saltonstall, had fully intended to ad- 
dress us. I will not take up time by reading all the letters 
which have been received by me or by officers of the Society 
on the subject of this meeting, but I have selected three 
characteristic ones. The first is from Col. Henry Lee. 

Brookline, Dec. 3, 1889. 

My dear Mr. Winthrop, — My physician, who has held me by 
the throat ever since Mr. Forbes's funeral, absolutely forbids my going 
forth this evening. I am bitterly disappointed, as I held Dr. Deane 
in esteem and affection, and I long to listen to the tributes to him and 
to respond amen. We — all the descendants of the Puritans — are 
virtuous, but we are not all attractive ; and Dr. Deane was. We all 
long to cease from our labors, and dream to find happiness in mere re- 
pose ; but many an honest merchant or bold navigator reaches this 
long-sought haven only to find himself stranded, like his own " wealthy 
Andrew, dock'd in sand." Dr. Deane, like a philosopher, realized his 
dream of happiness by change of occupation, by a successful transfer 
of his energies. 

Meeting him, years ago, again and again in the Cambridge cars, my 
curiosity was piqued to discover who was this gentleman with a kind 
of Sir Henry Wotton aspect, an air of dignity and repose, the look of 
one who in some cool, half-shaded library had beheld " the bright 
countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies," and 
I did not rest until I discovered. I sought his acquaintance, which I 
have valued more and more highly ever since. 

Yours truly, Henry Lee. 

The second letter is from one who was in former years a 
familiar figure at our meetings, but whom, by reason of his 
repeated absences in Europe, and his term of service as a 
cabinet-minister in Washington, we have long missed. I 
mean Judfje Endicott. 



28 

Salem, Not. 27, 1889. 
My dear Winthrop, — I regret to say that I have engagements 
early next week which render it impossible for me to attend the meet- 
ing of the Society at your house on Tuesday evening. I am especially 
gratified that you should have asked me to say a few words on the 
great loss we have sustained in the death of Dr. Deane, and if I could 
be present I should take much satisfaction in doing so. Though dur- 
ing recent years I have seldom met him, yet I formerly often had oc- 
casion to consult him in regard to historical questions ; for you know 
that the law sometimes turns upon a question of history, especially in 
Massachusetts, where the methods and usages of our ancestors on pub- 
lic matters, and a thorough examination of all the precedents, have 
often settled disputed questions in the courts. I can remember one 
case where Dr. Deane's sound learning and ready judgment may be 
said to have been of service in the administration of justice. I could 
recall other instances, did space and time allow ; but at this moment 
we are probably all thinking more of the personal quality and influence 
of the man, his gracious manners, his ready friendship, his open mind 
absolutely fair, the confidence he inspired, the good work he gave in 
every labor and for every object to which the Society is devoted, and 
of the grievous personal and public loss that has befallen us. Hoping 
and believing that others will do justice to the subject and the occa- 
sion, I remain. 

Very truly yours, William C. Endicott. 

The third letter is from Dr. Henry M. Dexter, perhaps the 
most competent living critic of historical material relating to 
Plymouth Colony. In it he says : — 

I recall with pain a positive engagement to be out of town on 
Tuesday evening. I have been made personally so much Dr. Deane's 
debtor by many undeserved personal kindnesses that I should con- 
demn myself for serious ingratitude did I not, in spirit at least, join 
most heartily and tenderly in all expressions which may take shape on 
the occasion. I have always felt that his judgment as to any point in 
connection with Plymouth history was worth more than that of any 
other living man known to me. He always seemed to me about that, 
as about everything else, to be a wonderfully exact man. He knew 
all the jots and tittles of a subject, and he always seemed to know them 
off-hand and at once, without going to the books, as most of us have 
to go. I never detected him in a particle of that prejudgment which 
is inhospitable to new evidence ; and J have often thought how mag- 



29 

nificent it would have been if a journal of Brewster or of Robinson 
could have been found in some forgotten heap of old papers, cover- 
ing those vital years and pregnant events, and if we could have had 
Dr. Deane edit it with that microscopic knowledge of all the related 
facts and that loving tolerance toward every aspect which the most 
poly-sided subject may present. But, alas ! such a joyrnal has never 
yet turned up, and such editing as he would have given it is now no 
longer possible. 



The Treasurer, Mr. Charles C. Smith, was called on 
by the President, as one who had been closely associated 
with Dr. Deane for many years ; but he declined to 
speak. It has been thought proper, however, in order 
to complete the record of the tributes to our late asso- 
ciate by members of the Society, to insert here an ar- 
ticle written by Mr. Smith, which appeared in " The 
Boston Post " of November 14. 

The death of Mr. Charles Deane, the distinguished histori- 
cal scholar, which occurred at Cambridge yesterday morning, 
was not unexpected by his personal friends and his associates 
in the studies to which he was so strongly attached. For 
more than seven months he had been confined to his house 
with gradually failing strength ; and now has come a not un- 
welcome release from a struggle between life and death which 
only a naturally strong constitution could have sustained so 
long. But the close of a life so fruitful in work of great and 
permanent value, and which it might reasonably have been 
hoped would be prolonged with full vigor for another decade, 
will be felt as a loss by every student of our early colonial his- 
tory, and especially by every student of the earliest history of 
Virginia and Massachusetts. In his knowledge of the early 
history of these colonies, including the separate history of the 
Plymouth Colony, Mr. Deane had no peer; and the numerous 
monographs in which he made clear one or another obscure 
point in their history must forever remain monuments of his 
iinwearied diligence in research, the soundness of his judg- 
ment, and his ardent love of truth. 



30 

Mr. Deane was born at Biddeford, in what was then the 
District of Maine, on the 10th of November, 1813, and com- 
pleted the preparatory studies for admission to Bowdoin Col- 
lege at the usual age ; but in consequence of the death in 
college of an elder brother his plan of life was changed, and 
at the age of nineteen he came to Boston to enter on a busi- 
ness career. For this he was not less qualified than he was 
for a literary life. In a few years he became a partner in the 
great dry-goods firm of Waterston, Pray & Co., and in 1864 
he retired from active business with an ample fortune. After 
that time he devoted himself mainl}' to historical studies, to 
which he had already given much attention. In 1849 he was 
chosen a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and 
two years later he was made a member of the American Anti- 
quarian Society. In 1856 he received from Harvard College 
the honorary degree of A.M. In 1871 Bowdoin College con- 
ferred on him the degree of LL.D. ; and in 1886, on the 
two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Har- 
vard College, he received from the University the same hon- 
orary designation, in recognition of his rank as an " antiquary 
and historian, a master among students of American history." 
These are only some of the many honors which he worthily 
won, and wore with rare modesty. 

In the investigation of historical truth, Mr. Deane's mind 
always worked with absolute precision and accuracy. He 
was slow and cautious in forming an opinion on disputed 
questions, and was never hasty to print the results at which 
he had arrived. But when he had reached a conclusion on 
any question the most cautious investigators knew that he 
had probed the matter to the bottom, and that it was scarcely 
possible to learn anything more on the subject. He had a 
marvellously retentive and accurate memory. Whatever he 
had read, heard, or seen he could at once recall in its minutest 
details, to the confusion of others who thought they remem- 
bered everything, but whose memories were not so tenacious 
as his. With a mind so thoroughly stored with the fruits of 
patient research, largely conducted in his own priceless li- 
brary, — the richest in early Americana of any private library 
in this neighborhood, — he had no theories to maintain, and he 
approached every question with absolute integrity of purpose. 



31 

In his relations to other students of history no man could 
have been more candid or more courteous ; and he was al- 
ways ready to aid other investigators pursuing- similar lines 
of inquiry. As a scholar, an associate, and a friend, he has 
left none but gracious memories. 

For twenty-five years Mr. Deane was an officer of the Mas- 
sachusetts Historical Society ; and it was in this capacity that 
his most important literary work was done, though his mas- 
terly report on Burgoyne's Surrender and other papers were 
first read before the Antiquarian Society, and he contributed 
to other publications, besides printing some monographs in- 
dependently. Eleven volumes of the " Proceedings of the His- 
torical Society " were issued under his supervision ; and to all 
of them he contributed important papers. He was at the same 
time the most active and influential member of the committees 
charged with the publication of eight of the Society's volumes 
of Collections. But the work by which he will be longest and 
most gratefully remembered is his carefully annotated edition 
of Governor Bradford's manuscript " History of Plymouth 
Plantation." He procured from England a transcript of this 
precious manuscript, which had long been buried in the li- 
brary of the Bishop of London at Fulham ; and he afterward 
edited it for the Historical Society in a manner which left 
nothing to be desired. If Mr, Deane had done nothing but 
publish this volume, his position and rank as an historical 
scholar would have been secure. But it is only the most im- 
portant in a long series of works by which he won for himself 
a foremost place among historical students. An enumeration 
of them would fill far too much space here, and it is enough 
to say now that they cover a wide range of topics, and not 
one of them could well be spared from our historical literature. 
As a writer Mr. Deane's style was remarkably clear, compact, 
and direct. With no attempt at rhetorical display and with 
no needless exhibition of wide and various reading, it was the 
natural product of a full mind, intent only on carrying con- 
viction to the minds of other inquirers. 

The minute read by the President was then adopted 
by a rising vote. 



liT i\ W 



: ^^^°^ V 


















♦ «o 



x^X 








^ ' 1 '^ 










. * ^ o 










V. ^ 










•^ ** '^i 












'^•^, 




» ^ 




.\~ ^ „■' 
















"^^ 








:P^ 


.-^^^Ji^r 


-^^' 











.^^4 






:> » '^. -6 > "^^r^Wirk* 



.J ^ * «. « o <» 




V 't^,. 












nP-^^ 









■-'A ^ 






4^ 






* 4> <<«. •»^ 









'>V 



'^^^<i 



o * 






^^- .^- 






s * c 



y^ 






• ^ ^ *:-^ " ^' • -" 






:i 



1> 



'^<:>- 
.v^. 






0^ \?. 









"^^^ 









<_7 



O !» O 



,V 















* B K O ' ^^* 



V. 



■«?» 



^ 



,0^ 



%>^' 



x~?:^v.^' 



v 









<^, 
s? 



, V ' • 
















gK3a==3 



